


the legend of oakgrove

by SearchingforSerendipity



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Gen, Storytelling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-13
Updated: 2016-08-13
Packaged: 2018-08-08 14:50:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 498
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7762123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SearchingforSerendipity/pseuds/SearchingforSerendipity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is the story of Oakgrove, down by Hobbiton: </p><p>Once there was a hobbit that was all that a hobbit should be. He let his door askew and the world saw it and the world came in and ate his home, ate him up.</p><p>  <em>(or so the story goes)<em></em></em></p>
            </blockquote>





	the legend of oakgrove

 

There is a tale hobbit parents their fauntlings, about the ghost that haunts the Oakgrove, down at Hobbiton. It is the sort of story best told after a good meal by the fire, when the moon is wan and the wind howls most like a memory of winter. Smoke spills out of the hearth, warms the stone to the touch.

It goes like this:

Once there was a hobbit, not too young but not too old. He was a respectable sort, staid and well read, unmarried but proper all the same. He was all that a hobbit should be, but for one failing: always did he keep his door one quarter bit open. It made his smail chill and smaller than it was, and many a neighbor frown. 

One day a Man in gray clothes and gray beads went to his green door and opened it to the world. And the world came in, until it filled every nook and cranny, every pantry and linen cabinet. It breathed queer songs down the wooden hall of the smail, and fed the fire to a loud roaring blaze, filled with strange dancing shapes. And the song fire birthed a fire in the hobbit's heart. He embraced the world, and the world embraced him. And he was lost forevermore.

(or so the story goes)

Once there was a hobbit that was all that a hobbit should be. He let his door askew and the world saw it and the world came in and ate his home, ate him up.

There are no ghost stories in the Shire, but if there were this would be it. All that was left of the wayward hobbit was a ghost, and then less than a shade. His great smial and neat garden became unkempt, wild places, branches curling around each other like a sleeping vineyear. 

(what is a ghost but an absense, the thing that thrives in the empty garden?)

The fauntlings love this story. They would have loved all the many and great stories about this hobbit, but as it is they know him only as a warning, a lesson-tale: close your door at night, don't listen to the songs in the wind, don't trust grey Man.

There was once an empty smail in the shire that goes wide and down throw that land. Only elders remember that; most people know it as the Oakgrove, where the air is heavy and the roots seem to dig deep into the earth, and the wind sings, sings.

 

(there is a cottage by a brown healing forest, under a long mountain shadow. it is not a smail, but it is a home. the halls are always warm, exactly as big and as deep as the owners want it to be. fire-song spills out of the windows like a silver stream, and the door is always always kept open.

that is not how the story goes, but then, what is a story but the echo of a ghost?)

 


End file.
